French Education Minister: “The Republic is under attack.” The reason? One French man was beheaded for his “freedom of expression.” “At the very moment that, in the name of fighting terror, the French state is devastating Raqqa, arresting refugee activists, banning climate demonstrations, and giving police the power to conduct home-invasions without a warrant at any hour for three months, the political classes’ propagandists have rallied French society behind them under the banner of defence of Republican ‘values’ – liberty, equality, fraternity, democracy, civilization, human rights. In this situation, the nature of Republicanism as the all-purpose ideology of the French ruling class emerges clearly. Republicanism can be harnessed to justify anything that aligns with the interests of French state power. In the name of Republican values, France can criminalize BDS , hold up racist caricature as an exemplary exercise of free speech, or seriously contemplate censorship of the media.
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51